A song of Smoke and Steel
by CCyan
Summary: It's all really at the beginning of the story, but short summary: Robert's Rebellion never happened because Aerys II died as a child and Westeros has advanced into an era that corresponds to our world's WWI. Disclaimer: Offensive language, nudity and other common ASOIAF themes will be feautured in the story, as well as several houses and noble families of my own imagination.
1. Information

Just some information about the size of regiments and such (only combatants in the Great War):

Dornish Armed Forces:  
**Infantry regiment**: 2,100 men, divided into ten companies of 210 men designated A-K, in turn divided into 7 platoons of 30 men designated A-G  
**Cavalry regiment**: 1,500 men, divided into ten companies of 150 men designated A-K, in turn divided into 5 platoons of 30 men designated A-E  
Weapons used:  
**Infantry**, Oldtown 15 rifle  
**Cavalry**, Lysene Cavalry Carbine 7 (LCC 7)  
**Dragoons**, Myrish Dragoon Carbine 3 (MDC 3)

Reachman Armed Forces:  
**Infantry regiment**: 3,000 men, divided into fifteen companies of 200 men designated A-P, in turn divided into 10 platoons of 20 men, designated A-K  
**Cavalry regiment**, 2,000 men , divided into ten companies of 200 men designated A-K, in turn divided into 10 platoons of 20 men designated A-K  
Weapons used:  
**Infantry**, Oldtown 15 rifle  
**Cavalry**, Oldtown Horseman's Rifle 1 (OHR 1)  
**Dragoons**, Oldtown Dragoon Carbine 8 (ODC 8)

Westerlands Armed Forces:  
**Infantry regiment**: 2,500 men, divided into ten companies of 250 men designated 1st-10th, in turn divided into 10 platoons of 25 men designated 1st-10th  
**Cavalry regiment**: 1,800 men, divided into ten companies of 180 men designated 1st-10th, in turn divided into ten platoons of 18 men designated 1st-10th  
Weapons used:  
**Infantry**, Lannisport Repeater 4 (LR 4)  
**Cavalry**, Swyft Cavalry Rifle (SCR)  
**Dragoons**, Lannisport Dragoon Carbine 11 (LDC 11) 

Riverlands Armed Forces:  
**Infantry regiment**: 2,000 men, divided into ten companies of 200 men designated 1st-10th, in turn divided into 10 platoons of 20 men designated 1st-10th  
**Cavalry regiment**: 1,500 men, divided into ten companies of 150 men designated 1st-10th in turn divided into 10 platoons of 15 men designated 1st-10th  
Weapons used:  
**Infantry**, Lannisport Repeater 4 (LR 4)  
**Cavalry**, Swyft Cavalry Rifle (SCR)  
**Dragoons**, Lannisport Dragoon Carbine 11 (LDC 11)

Valeman Armed Forces:  
**Infantry regiment**: 2,100 men, divided into ten companies of 210 men designated 1st-10th, in turn divided into 7 platoons of 30 men designated 1st-7th  
**Cavalry regiment**: 1,000 men, divided into ten companies of 100 men designated 1st-10th, in turn divided into 10 platoons of 10 men designated 1st-10th  
Weapons used:  
**Infantry**, Lannisport Repeater 4 (LR 4)  
**Cavalry**, Swyft Cavalry Rifle (SCR)  
**Dragoons**, Lannisport Dragoon Carbine 11 (LDC 11) 


	2. And so it begins

_The year is 987 After Aegon's Conquest, and the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros remain, though in a different form. In 733 AC King Aegon XIV granted each of the nine regions of his realm more autonomy, creating the United Kingdoms of Westeros. Westeros has modernized its military, the feudal system has been replaced by a well-established aristocracy, and it has gone on an imperialist spree since 842 when it annexed five of the northern Summer Islands. Since then it has annexed chunks of Western Essos and colonized large parts of Ulthos and some parts of Sothoros. Since the Kingdoms have more autonomy they are free to make war against each other, provided they have a proper casus belli, it has only happened once from 792-799 when Lord Lancel V Lannister of the Westerlands invaded the Riverlands, but now it once more seems possible. The tensions have been rising between the two great alliances on Westeros, the Southern Union (the Reach and Dorne) and the Triumvirate (the Westerlands, the Riverlands and the Vale) and the three neutral kingdoms, the Iron Islands, the North, and the Stormlands are readying their defenses for the huge war to come. Each of the alliances hopes to gain the support of the neutrals. The two alliances are arming quickly, having mobilized their conscripts. Once again the words of the Starks have proved correct: "Winter is coming" though not the winter of nature, no it is in the middle of summer, but the Winter of War._

Highgarden, the Reach, United Kingdoms of Westeros, 987 AC

As the soldiers marched past, Donnel Tyrell felt uncomfortable. He was a distant cousin of Lord Tyrell's and had spent most of his life on a tiny mansion by the Mander only coming to Highgarden six months ago, so his thoughts mattered little. First came the 1st Highgarden Division, then the 2nd and then the 3rd and so on. The military parade continued for nearly two hours.  
"Donnel!" shouted Lord Layton Tyrell, not too unpleasantly. Donnel walked up to him.  
"Aren't they splendid, cousin?" the Lord Paramount of the Reach asked over the loud music.  
"They are, my lord" Donnel replied. That was nothing but the truth. In their green and gold uniforms, the soldiers looked glorious.  
_But how glorious will they look when they have tasted battle? How glorious will they look when they've been shelled, when they've been wounded, when they've seen their friends die?  
_Donnel thought.  
Lord Tyrell brought him out of his own mind.  
"I have decided to give you a command, cousin"  
Donnel had time to think, _Fucking hell_ before he automatically panted:  
"My lord?"  
"Colonel Danwell Dunn of the 6th Highgarden Rifles passed away three days past, heart attack I hear, he wasn't a young man after all, anyway I have decided to put you in his place"  
"I am honored of course, but wouldn't it be more prudent to put someone with more experience in command of a regiment?" he asked.  
"I don't want experience, I want someone from my family, you're a Tyrell after all" replied the Lord of Highgarden.  
"I am honored" Donnel repeated, too shocked to say anything else.

The cavalry followed the infantry, looking even more splendid than the foot soldiers. Donnel looked on; he would command a regiment of foot and the infantry would suffer the most. For all that, the military parade carried on.

**General Edric Westerling waited eagerly **for the telegram that would inform Sixth Army that a state of war existed between the Triumvirate and the Southern Union. Sixth Army was based on Lord Swyft's lands, centered around the towns of Tywinton and Reachwater, but with small bases in the smaller towns of Farbottom, Swyftwood and Westwell Rest. They were ready to sweep into the Reach, though Edric knew they wouldn't have an easy time in the war. The Reachmen had brought up their Army of the Greyflow to the border. The two armies were evenly matched and so the fighting would be hard, but Westerling was confident he would prevail. Of course the Westerlands didn't just have the Reach to worry about, Dorne as well and if the Stormlands decided to join the Southern Union… they weren't alone either, no far from it. The Riverlands and the Vale would commit to the fight as well, each with around eight million men. The Westerlands itself would commit twelve million. Each region of each alliance had mobilized their conscripts in huge numbers. Edric Westerling took a long swig of a glass of Braavosi firewater the color of amber, which the Braavosi called something unintelligible, Edric called it rotgut. His family was not very powerful in the Westerlands nowadays, but Edric had managed to rise through the ranks of the Army to command a field army of his own. He was not very well liked by the other Generals who commanded the other ten field armies, all of them from powerful houses. Once the war had begun the Navy would sweep down on the Shield Islands, though he didn't they could hold them for long, the Redwyne navy-which was larger than the entire Westerlands navy-would surely attack and retake them. The Redwynes would surely rule the Sunset Sea and Edric was sure they'd send a flotilla to reinforce the Dornish fleet in the Narrow Sea against the Arryns. The seas would belong to the Southern Union, even if the Tullys sent their navy to aid the Arryns or the Westermen, but the land, the land would belong to the Triumvirate, of that he was sure.

Suddenly, Edric's aide rushed into the room and handed him a telegram. Major Tybolt Yarwyck was normally a talkative young man, but now he was silent, a hungry smile on his face. Edric knew what the telegram said but he read it out loud all the same:  
"_The Department of War of Lord Loren Lannister of Casterly Rock hereby informs you that a state of war exists between the Westerlands and the Reach. You are commanded by the Department of War to invade the enemy lands by the Greyflow and besiege the towns of Greyborough, Goldentown and Greyburn in good order, then you will advance on Goldengrove_" he finished. Those orders were less than ideal, Edric had hoped he would be sent to combat the Army of the Greyflow immediately and then go on a conquering streak instead of the other way around, but alas orders were orders.

**Captain Dermot Sloane bellowed at **the men of Company E of the 16th Goldengrove Rifles.  
"Are we going to let the damn westermen beat us!?"  
"Sir, no, sir!" his men bellowed back. The Army of the Greyflow had been fighting the Westerman Sixth Army for nearly two weeks, from one side of the river for which it was named. The Reachmen's artillery bellowed behind the trenches, firing their deadly projectiles at the enemy. The hostile artillery bellowed back.

"Well then, I suppose we'll have to go out there and lick 'em don't we?!" he shouted in his sharp Dornish marches accent.  
"Sir, yes, sir!" his men screamed back at the top of their lungs. They clutched their Oldtown 15 rifles and climbed over the top, sprinting over no man's land. Company E had been in a stretch of trench in front of the Greyman's Ford crossing, they rushed splashing through the ford's waters now, along with Company F and Company G. Sloane threw himself down in a shell hole which could serve as a foxhole. He aimed and fired his Oldtown 15 at a Westerman in red, he didn't know if he'd hit him or not but the man went down anyway. He worked the bolt to bring another bullet into the breech and fired again. A few of his men threw grenades toward the enemy trench, just as a Westerman machine gun opened up on them, from behind a proper machine gun barricade.  
"Fucking hell!" Dermot exclaimed as he saw en entire squad of his men being mowed down. The rest of his men had sense enough to find foxholes of their own.  
"Captain Sloane!" the loudest voice Dermot had ever heard sounded behind him, he knew who it belonged to.  
"Colonel Rowan, sir!" he bellowed as he turned around to see the commander of the 16th Goldengrove Rifles.  
"This raid on the enemy trench has to be ended, captain, they'll be sending in a squadron of aeroplanes to bomb the foe in their trenches and I don't want three companies out of my regiment anywhere near that bombardment!" said Colonel Laswell Rowan, a fifth cousin once-removed to the Lord of Goldengrove.  
"Yes sir, but that machine gun is going to shoot us in the back if we run, my men will be slaughtered!"  
"It's a risk we'll have to take, captain!" Colonel Rowan said.

Reluctantly but quickly, Captain Dermot Sloane stood up and shouted: "Company E, fall back to the trench!"

His men followed the order and started sprinting back over Greyman's Ford. A few of the men went down in the water, red spreading in a great cloud around them but much fewer than he would have expected. Once they were all in the trenches, they waited only around five minutes before the squadron of bomber aeroplanes buzzed overhead, dropping their deadly cargo upon the enemy. The machine gun that had harassed Company E went up in flames as well, the explosion killing its crew. The Reachmen cheered. All the way up the trench they cheered, certain victory had come. Dermot Sloane knew better. The fight had just begun.

**Colonel Cleos Ryger of the **17th Pinkmaiden Rifles rode beside the first line of his regiment as it marched with the rest of the Army of the Red Fork toward Bitterbridge and the towns north and south of it. Cleos knew which town was first, a town with which he was somewhat acquainted, a collection of houses that boasted ten thousand inhabitants called Bitterville, a name he thought of as undeserved as it was a pleasant place. He would have to fight his way into the town this time, instead of simply riding in behind the wheel of his father's motorcar. They weren't too far from Bitterville when General Vance decided to let the men stop marching. Supper that night was salt pork and beans. The next day they marched for about six miles before stopping about half a mile outside Bitterville. Soon enough the attack commenced. The Riverman batteries of twelve-inch field guns opened up, as did the smaller quick-firing three-inch howitzers. Then, they sent in the infantry. The 1st Pinkmaiden Division went in first; that included the 17th Rifles. Cleos commanded his men to run-and-fire, himself firing his .45 caliber pistol into the town. He regretted every round he squeezed off at the lovely town called Bitterville, which wouldn't remain lovely for long.

**The sun was just rising **when Captain Trystane Manwoody took a big gulp of coffee from his tin cup. The 4th Red Mountains Foot had been in said mountains for nearly three months before the war had begun, and they would remain here for its duration, or so Trystane thought. They were mountain soldiers after all and didn't do very well in other conditions. But surely the foe would send some forces into the Red Mountains, so that the Mountain Division of Dorne would also have some fun. The 4th Red Mountains Foot was stationed in the Prince's Pass, not far from Kingsgrave, so Trystane felt right at home. As he walked he could feel the weight of the Oldtown 15 rifle on his back. The Dornish forces had adopted the weapon six years earlier after their old rifle, the Volantene Yeoman's Rifle 12 (VYR 12) had proved inept at defeating the pirates on the yet-to- be Dornish Stepstones. The VYR 12 had been lighter and thus more suited for mountain warfare, or so Trystane thought, but no one had listened to him, and so he slugged around the heavier-if not much heavier-Oldtown 15. His boots crunched down on the red dust of the mountains as he knelt to splash some water out of his canteen on the face of one his men who was still asleep while most of the other mountain troopers of Company B were awake. The trooper shook awake and writhed out of his blanket.  
"It looks like the entire regiment is moving; you better get up lest you want me to leave you behind" Manwoody said.  
"Yes, sir, I'm sorry, sir" the trooper sighed as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Trystane handed the trooper his coffee, the man needed it more than he did.  
"Where are we moving, sir?" the trooper asked once the coffee had forced his eyes open.  
"Don't know, they don't tell me much neither, though we're moving north so might be we're going to Lemonpeak or Red House" Trystane said as he stood and started moving away from the trooper.  
He turned his head and said with a smile:  
"Or maybe, they're marching us off to war!"

**The sound of artillery shook **newly-appointed Colonel Donnel Tyrell to the core. The 6th Highgarden Rifles had been assigned to the Army of the Mander, and had marched upwards to Cider Hall to join up with the Army of the Cockleswhent. From Cider Hall they had moved west to Longtable to join up with the Army of the Blueburn, all in all it had been a hell of a lot of marching, now they were entrenched three miles south of some town called Blueburn Pines, that had been captured by the Riverman Army of the Red Fork, and the Rivermen made no qualms about defending their prize. A couple of quick-firing three-inch howitzers joined their fire to the roar of the Rivermen's twelve-inchers. All in all, the bombardment made for a chilling experience. Donnel had seen combat only once, squeezing the trigger of his .45 frantically during a raid by Riverman infantry, the rest of the time he had either been shelled, or relaxed whilst his own side bombarded the enemy. If the three Reachman armies could retake Blueburn Pines, then they could push onwards toward Goldwater and Bluefields and finally Bitterville. Suddenly, the enemy bombardment died down and Donnel heard someone shout:  
"They're charging!"  
He braced himself and shouted himself, to his own regiment:  
"Get ready!" he didn't need to give the order, they knew what to do. They fired their Oldtown 15s with great accuracy, at the swarms of men in blue and red streaming over no-man's-land toward them.  
"Tully!" the Rivermen shouted, that or "Piper!" or "Vance!"  
Donnel drew his .45 and started blazing away at the enemy. He didn't think he hit anyone, his aim wasn't very good, but it soothed him just a little. Suddenly, a foe leaped into their stretch of trench, ready to fire his rifle. He never had a chance. Three of Donnel's men were on him in an instant, their bayonets rose and fell and they turned away, leaving behind a corpse with three holes in it. The men went back to firing at the hostile onslaught. Finally, Donnel did kill a foe, a fat riverman bearing a Vance badge. He took his aim and squeezed the trigger of his .45; the fat man fell into the mud, a bleeding hole in his head. The Reachman field guns picked up as well, firing into the charging Rivermen.

Finally, the attackers turned and rushed back toward Blueburn Pines. The Reachman guns died down with the attack, reluctant to damage the town.  
_I survived again… _he thought and looked around. Two of his men lay dead from enemy fire, more experienced men, better men.

**The aeroplanes swarmed overhead like **so many bees. Captain Dermot Sloane looked up at them from his dugout. These aeroplanes were not of a friendly sort. Sloane squeezed off a few rounds at the machines, though they were too far up for the bullets to do any good. Antiaircraft guns took up the fight from behind the Reachman trenches, large puffs of smoke spreading in the air. Two of the enemy aeroplanes went down, and then another, but there were too many of them to do much good. One of the aeroplanes (a fighting scout) started to strafe Sloane's stretch of trench, the pilot firing his twin-machine guns. Dermot fired at the aeroplane and put a hole in one of its wings; he worked the bolt to bring another round into the breech and did the same again. The fighting scout went down, though not because of Captain Sloane. A Reachman machine gun opened up on the aeroplane and it must have hit the pilot because the aircraft managed to just get out of the trench before it crashed into the Greyflow. It looked as if the rest of the aeroplanes were observation crafts. A flight group of Reachman fighting scouts was joining the fray in the sky, helping the antiaircraft guns bring down the enemy observation planes. Most of the observers went down; others turned around in the air and sped over toward the Westerman aerodrome. Once Dermot reckoned it to be all clear, he shouted as much to the men of Company E.  
"Let's go over there and lick 'em in their own trench!"  
"Sir, yes, sir!" his men replied. They fastened their bayonets and went over the top with a howl, as they had many times before. They splashed over the water of Greyman's Ford; one of his men went down, his body was born away by the water of the Greyflow. Dermot threw himself down in a shell hole and blazed away with his Oldtown 15 at the enemy. His men did the same, they had learned from the last time when a machine gun had mowed down an entire squad. Dermot took a hand grenade from his belt, removed the pin and chucked it into the enemy trench. The explosion was a large one, and it looked to have killed some of the red-uniformed Westermen. Dermot aimed and squeezed his trigger; the man he'd aimed at went down. Sloane worked the bolt and fired again. Then, he made a hand gesture and stood and… charged. His men followed him, the entire company. They leaped into the enemy trench, stabbing with their bayonets and firing their rifles at close range. Dermot drove his bayonet through the belly of a blond Westerman before shooting another. His men howled and cleared out the stretch of the trench, they outnumbered the foes that guarded this stretch of trench.  
"Section X, make sure to guard the entrance to the stretch whilst we loot it!" he commanded. The four men of Section X did as he commanded. The rest of Company E went about the business of looting. In a dugout, Dermot found a few pouches of chewing tobacco and burlap sack full of chocolate bars.  
"Throw me some o' that chew, captain" said Sergeant Garlan.  
"Later, go about gathering some more"  
Dermot knelt down and searched the pocket of the blond man he'd killed, he found thirty Stags in the man's wallet a long with a hundred Stars. Suddenly, Dermot's hand closed around something hard. He removed it from the man's pocket and opened the cigar case. Inside were five cigars from the Summer Islands, of fine tobacco. Sloane smiled a broad smile and continued to loot the dead bodies and the dugouts. He ended up with a new pair of boots (better than his own), another pouch of chew, a flask of Braavosi rotgut, a small sack of coffee from Volantis, another three hundred Stars and ten more Stags and even two Dragons. His men had found things to their satisfaction as well. Dermot stowed the things in his large burlap sack and climbed out of the enemy trench. The men of Company E did the same and they rushed over no-man's-land. One man was shot in his back, a man from Section X picked up the burlap sack the dead man had dropped and splashed over Greyman's Ford. When they leaped back into their own stretch of trench, the men let out a happy howl. Dermot opened his burlap sack and retrieved his new boots. He removed his old ones and handed them to one of his men who'd asked for them (the man's own had several holes in them) and put on his new ones of thick black leather. Then he struck a match on the sole of his brand new boot and lighted one of his cigars. He puffed away happily and threw Sergeant Garlan one of the pouches of chew, as he'd promised, before retreating to his dugout, to watch the Reachman artillery start to bombard the enemy.

**Trystane Manwoody knelt behind the **cliff, looking out over the area of the Southern Dornish Marches. The bandits had taken up residence in the border town of Stormsand Creek, situated by the rill after which it was named. The town was in the contested area, which soured the relations between Dorne and the Stormlands, but it had been under Dornish control for nearly four years, well now it was under bandit control. Trystane would much rather be fighting Rivermen or Westermen, but he was glad he wasn't biding his time in the Red Mountains. When the 4th Red Mountains Foot had been informed of the bandits taking over Stormsand Creek and Redwall, Colonel Fowler had dispatched Company A to retake Redwall and Company B to take care of Stormsand Creek. Manwoody peered through the field glasses toward the town.  
"About two hundred brigands, look like deserters from the Stormlands Army, no artillery" he said, and Sergeant Lemonwood went off to inform the rest of Company B, camped two hundred yards or so away. He didn't really have to keep his head down; night was coming on swiftly and the orange color of the Dornishmen's uniforms was almost the same color as the ground and the surrounding hills. Trystane stood up and walked off toward his command. He told his men to gather around him as he drew in the sand. He drew a circle with a stick:  
"This is Stormsand Creek" he said in a flat voice.  
"Platoons C, D and E will move in from the west, _here_" he put emphasis on the last word as he drew an arrow in the sand.

"Platoons A, B and F will move in from the east, _here_. Both groups will make sure to keep themselves a hundred yards away, and make sure too keep low. I will lead Platoon G up to the bandits' front door and do the same. On my signal all three groups will move forward with at a run with bayonets fastened, you will firing as well as running, signal will be a flare, any questions?" he finished. No one had any questions. Once everything was in place, Trystane removed the flare gun from his belt and squeezed the trigger. He threw the gun into the dust. He clutched his Oldtown 15 and charged forward, followed by his men. They fired into the town, as he'd commanded. Trystane dove down behind a rock when the bandits fired back. By the way they were organized they couldn't have been anything but deserters from the Stormlands Army. That made him both slightly less enthusiastic about fighting them, and slightly more. He squeezed off a few rounds into Stormsand Creek. A few of his men went down, bleeding from bullet holes. He heard more gunfire break out as the two groups he'd sent to the flanks of the town charged forth as well. Manwoody stood up as the enemy fire faltered, no doubt distracted. It looked as if the two other groups had drawn away several foes from his front. He waved his men forward and rushed forth himself before diving down into the red dirt after a fusillade of enemy fire cracked past him, killing two or three of his men. They couldn't be farther away from the town than thirty yards. Trystane got to his knees. He took his aim at a bandit standing in the window of a saloon and fired. The man went down with a howl. Trystane got to his feet and worked the bolt to bring another round into the breech of his rifle as he ran. Once he had gotten behind the wall of a small house, he heard a shout from the enemy.  
"Damned brownies! Why can't ya get the fuck out o' here? This is our town, ya hear?"  
Trystane knew what wanted to shout something back, he just didn't know what. He decided to go with the official drabble.  
"This town is part of the sovereign territory of the Principality of Dorne, it having been taken over by enemies of the Principality, the Dornish Armed Forces are hereby commandeering this town by force!"  
"Shut the hell up ya fucking browny!" the man shouted back, as if to underscore his words, a bullet cracked past Trystane. Several rifles barked not too far away and several groans and howls filled the air. Trystane took a risk and stuck out his head. A couple of men in mismatched clothing lay bleeding on the ground. One of the men, a big fellow with a long salt-and-pepper beard, lay crumpled against a barrel. The man pointed at Trystane after he'd broken cover completely.  
"You…" the man coughed up blood.  
"Ya damned-_cough_-ya damned brownie… I hope-_cough_ -ya're happy now, ya fucking-_cough_-shithead, I hope ya're damned happy-_cough_ -now, cause when we-_cough_-when we meet in the deepest o' them Seven Hells-_cough_-it's my fucking turn to be damned happy to see ya burn along with me"  
Trystane aimed at the bandit's head and fired. The man's brains were blown out. He looked at the men who had killed the bandits. They were from Platoon A, to judge from that very letter being printed on the badges they wore. So they had broken in from the east then, as well as the south. The gunfire had not died down at all in the west however. The men from Platoon A led him and the men from Platoon G to the rest of Platoon A. Trystane led the two platoons toward where the gunfire hadn't yet died down. When they got there, Trystane had no trouble seeing why the fighting hadn't died down. While the other parts of town where the Dornishmen had attacked had by no means been empty-at least thirty bandits had protected both fronts-the western part had been where most bandits had been. By Trystane's best estimate, more than a hundred bandits were fighting the attacking Dornishmen. Both sides had suffered casualties-with a slight majority of the corpses not wearing Dornish uniforms-but now the bandits were attacked form both the front and the rear, and they were outnumbered. Trystane threw himself down behind a motorcar-a rarity in the Marches-and fired at a bandit who was firing in turn at the Dornishmen in front of him. The man went down, never knowing what hit him. After that bandit died, the fight intensified as the newly-arrived Dornishmen started to shoot. Manwoody squeezed off a round toward a bandit with a close-trimmed, black beard and worked the bolt to bring another bullet into the breech. Trystane fired again, this time at a bandit who had taken his position on the roof of a saloon. As the bullet penetrated into his skull, the bandit dropped his rifle and then slid lifelessly down the roof and onto the ground below. Trystane continued to fire until the last of the bandits in this part of town were dead. He looked around. No civilians had been stupid enough to exit their houses during the entire duration of the firefight, of that he was glad.  
"Casualty count!" he commanded. After a few minutes, Sergeant Quentyn Lemonwood shouted back:  
"Thirty-three of ours! Thirteen dead, twenty wounded!"  
Trystane growled, that was more than a platoon's worth of men.  
"Bring the wounded and the dead to that hospital over yonder," he pointed "then we move over to town hall, see if any bandits are held up in there"

As he watched the men Sergeant Lemonwood had assigned to the task go about it, Trystane thought to himself:  
_I hope Company A had an easier time taking back Redwall… thirteen men dead, now that's a hard pill to swallow_

Once the men were done, Trystane led them toward the town hall. Once they got close, a machine gun opened up on them from the window of the bell tower of the town hall. The Dornishmen hit the dirt and many crawled off to find cover. Trystane was among those who did. Some of the unlucky fellows, who didn't crawl fast enough, got shot and died. Trystane counted another four dead and another man wounded. Once behind a stack of crates, Manwoody got to his knees. At first he wondered where the bandits had gotten hold of a machine gun, but then he answered his own question.  
"Stole it from the Stormlands Army arsenal over at Orys' Hill, I reckon" he muttered, he had heard the nearby arsenal had been raided. Several rifles opened up on the Dornishmen, barking out of windows or doorways. Trystane thought about how to go about taking the building.

_By storm _he decided after a little while. It would be a costly charge, but it was required. He had gotten a deadline of a week to retake the town, and if they would besiege town hall he was sure it would take longer than that. He resolved to at least be among the first to charge the building, not wanting his men to do what he wouldn't. He gave the orders and his men obeyed. They streamed forth firing their rifles and howling. Suddenly the machine gun picked up again, mowing down the front line of Dornish troops, but in doing so, the machine gunner made a fatal mistake, he stuck out his head to scream:  
"Die you goddamned, oppressin' brownies! Die you filthy shithea…" he didn't get to finish, because Trystane had squeezed off a round with his Oldtown 15 that caught him in the forehead. The man crumpled and hung with his limp arms out of the window, his chin resting on the windowsill. The machine gun he'd fired fell to the ground with a loud rattle. The battlefield fell quiet for just a moment. Suddenly a bandit rifle broke the silence by firing at and killing a trooper. Then it was on again. Trystane broke cover and charged ahead of everyone else. He kicked in the door to town hall, stabbed the bandit inside in the belly with his bayonet and rushed forward. Several of his men followed him inside. They shot the bandit sentry posted in the stairwell and rushed up the stairs. When they got to the second floor of the five-storied building that was Stormsand Creek's administrative center, four or five bandits opened up on them. Trystane slid into cover behind a bookshelf and fired at the enemy. They were taken care of in short order, though not before wounding a Dornish soldier. Trystane assigned two men to carry the hurt man outside before continuing on with the rest of his men. They kicked in the doors of a large banquet hall on the third floor, to find it housing almost twenty bandits. He was surprised at the amount of bandits there were. The fight in the banquet hall did not last very long either and cost the Dornishmen two lives. He assigned a squad to do with them what their fellows had done to the wounded man. The squad rejoined them shortly after the two first men had returned. They continued to clear out the third floor as more and more Dornish soldiers streamed into town hall from outside. When they got to the fifth and final floor (not counting the tower) rifles fired through the doors to the mayor's office. Trystane led a section in kicking in the doors. They gutted the bandits inside like fish. In the comfortable chair, a gag in his mouth and his hands bound behind his back, sat the Mayor of Stormsand Creek. He was a short, fat man, with pale skin that suggested he was of Stormlandish blood and a little mop of thin grey hair. Trystane removed the bayonet from his rifle and cut the ropes binding the man's hands behind his back. The mayor removed the gag himself and spluttered:  
"Oh thank you, so, so very much… Captain" he said after looking at Trystane's badge.  
"It is no matter, just doing my duty, no bunch of bandits should be able to take a town of Dorne" Manwoody replied.  
"No, these were no mere bandits…" said the Mayor, whose name, Trystane had to remember, was Ravean.  
"Deserters from the Stormlands Army" Trystane conceded.  
"No, they were more than that, they kept going on about being men from the 'Army of the Socialist Republic of the Marches' and went on and on about the 'oppression of the proletariat' and all that other red drivel"  
_Red revolutionaries…_ Trystane thought, dismayed. He assumed the same "Army of the Socialist Republic of the Marches" had taken over Redwall. That brought an end to his hopes of a quick bandit sweeping, and he knew he would fight a war in the Dornish Marches.  
"Captain Manwoody, sir!" a private shouted from outside.  
Trystane Manwoody went outside to where the private held a bandit-no a red revolutionary-by the collar. Manwoody saw the man had been shot in his upper left arm. Trystane resolved to question him. He began with asking questions to which he thought he knew the answer:  
"Who are you?" he asked.  
"Fuck you" the man spat back. Trystane punched him in the stomach.  
"Who are you?" he repeated.  
"Me, I'm a nobody… we though…" the man made a sweeping gesture,  
"We're the People's Revolutionary Army, the Army of the Socialist Republic of the Marches"  
"There is no Socialist Republic of the Marches, this is part of the Principality of Dorne"  
"Oh we'll see about that" replied the man. Trystane continued to question him.  
"Where did you get these weapons?" he asked.  
"Got some when we left the army of the aristocracy called the Stormlands, got most when we raided the arsenal over at Orys' Hill" the man replied.  
"Did you take over the town of Redwall?"

"The town of Redwall is part of the sovereign territory of the Socialist Republic of the Marches, yes"  
Trystane thought about repeating the part about how there wasn't any such thing, but decided against it. After he'd finished questioning the man he commanded his men to hang him at dawn. Then he ordered another casualty count. By the end of the count, the amount of dead soldiers had risen to twenty-three and the amount of wounded to thirty-five. Almost two platoons' worth of casualties was quite a feat to inflict upon a company of well-armed and well-trained Dornish soldiers. Then he remembered most if not all the reds had been deserters from the equally well-trained Stormlands Army. He commanded the dead to be buried not too far outside of town, white, wooden seven-pointed stars to be put up to mark their graves. The wounded he sent to the town hospital. He looked out from the balcony of the Mayor's office, out over Stormsand Creek and the red hills beyond and again, knew he would be fighting a war here soon.


	3. The Revolution

4 miles outside Tallwood Kindling, Dornish Marches (or the Socialist Republic of the Marches), United Kingdoms of Westeros, 987 AC

Company D of the 3rd Stone Way Dragoons galloped over the plains outside Tallwood Kindling. With the wind in his face, Captain Doran Wyl shouted:  
"This is the life, ain't it, boys?!"  
His men howled gleefully in response. They all rode Sand Steeds, the breed worked perfectly with the light cavalry function, the Dragoons served. In the Boneway, Doran had felt confined, only being able to ride four or five times a week, now, with the Red revolution in the Marches, he rode every day. Three companies had been dispatched from the 3rd Stone Way Dragoons, to guard three towns situated near the border with the Stormlands, not because the Department of War feared that the Stormlands would attack Dorne-they were after all fighting the reds too, in their own territory-but because revolutionary activity was particularly strong here. Tallwood Kindling had been subject to several small raids these past few days, Doran had finally decided to deal with the reds who had conducted the raids once and for all. Wyl patted the butt of the carbine that hung on the right side of his saddle, that way he could easily reach it. The rest of the Dornish Army might have switched over from the VYR 12 to the Reachman Oldtown 15 six years ago, but the Cavalry Corps had not. They had kept the Myrish Dragoon Carbine 3 (MDC 3), or well at least the fifteen regiments of Dragoons had kept it. The other types of cavalry used other carbines. After an hour of galloping, they reached a small village. On the outskirts of the village a sign proclaimed:  
"_Welcome to Sweatstream Plains:  
Population: 234_"  
Doran snorted with laughter, the Company was only slightly outnumbered by the inhabitants of the village, and of course he laughed at the name of the village.  
"Sweatstream Plains, place smells worse than the barracks back at Wylton I bet!" a private somewhere behind Doran shouted. The entire company laughed. The village smelled no worse than any other in the Marches, they found that out when they rode in. Several men saluted the dragoons, others ignored them, one man shouted:  
"Hail the brave Dornishmen!"  
They dismounted a little ways outside the village and Doran told his men:  
"Go and visit some saloons or brothels or whatever else you sick bastards like, we rendezvous back here in two hours"  
Wyl went into a saloon himself and ordered a large cup of ale. The bartender leaned over slightly,  
"What you fellows doin' out here? Ain't the reds down the Redwall way?" the man asked.

"Yes, but intelligence suggests we got a couple hundred of them in these parts, and I know for a fact we got at least twenty" Doran replied.  
"Well I sure as hell ain't seen none" replied the bartender.  
"I have" a man a couple of barstools to the left of Doran.  
"What the fuck ya goin' on 'bout, Gerris? Ya ain't seen no reds, neither" retorted the bartender.  
"I have too, ya damned fool," the man turned to Doran.  
"Was on my farm, couple days ago, a few of them there reds, thirteen or so, passed by and took three o' my chickens and my old milk cow, the bastards. Kept goin' on about how they's gonna help feed the People's Revolutionary Army or some shit like that"  
"In what direction did they head?"  
"West, would be southwest o' here" the man replied.  
"Thank you, you have served your country well" Doran replied. The man looked confused, but accepted the praise. After the two hours he'd allotted his men, he went back to the horses to find the entire company already mounted.  
"Where we headed, sir?" asked First Lieutenant Dagos Qorgyle as Doran mounted his own steed.  
"Southwest, got information that says the reds might be camped nine or ten miles away in that direction"  
Company D headed off in force.  
They passed a good-sized farm, presumably Gerris', and thousands upon thousands of yards of dry plains. After around nine miles of trotting, they could see a fire on the horizon. Night had fallen. Doran sent off a dismounted squad as scouts. They returned an hour later.  
"Reds" the leader of the squad confirmed, "around twenty of them, but they went on about how there were reinforcements further southwest"  
Doran nodded and the squad mounted. Doran turned to his men:  
"We'll encircle them, do not hold fire but make sure at least one man survives, we'll need to question him"  
They galloped forward. Doran took his carbine from his saddle, when he was within range he fired, and so did the rest of his company. The foes mounted their own horses and fell back. The Dornishmen followed. Suddenly and shockingly, a machine gun opened up from not too far away. It killed some cavalrymen. Another machine gun opened a few yards to left of the other. Rifles picked up as well. Doran realized they'd been trapped, whether by Gerris the farmer or by the reds on their own, they'd been trapped. As scores of his men went down he turned around and galloped away, surrounded by what men remained to him.

**The machine guns continued to **fire after the Dornish cavalry even after they'd turned on their heels and galloped off. When they were out of range and out of sound, they died down.  
"Gerris didn't fail us!" exclaimed Boremund Gray (a surname he had chosen for himself, as had every other man of the Socialist Republic of the Marches).  
"Aye he said he'd get us some Dornish oppressors and he did!" replied Gowen Edricssen, who'd manned one of the machine guns. Groans rose from where the Dornishmen, dead and wounded lay. A few men, Boremund among them, went over to them. Most of the oppressors were dead, but a few were wounded. One of them wore a fancier uniform than the others. Boremund knelt down by him and said:  
"What's your name?" he asked.  
"I am First Lieutenant-_groan_-First Lieutenant Dagos Qorgyle" the man whispered, no doubt incapable of doing more.  
"We got ourselves an aristocrat, boys!" Boremund shouted. Several other men laughed. The Lieutenant had four or five bullet holes in his belly and right arm.  
"Doc!" Boremund shouted, "Doc!"  
When he did finally arrive, Doc was sputtering: "I am First Physician Wyman Overtree, I will not answer to: 'Doc'"  
"Calm your breeches, Wyman" Boremund replied. Overtree looked uncomfortable but bent down and told Boremund to help him get the Lieutenant up. They supported the wounded man and led him into the small cottage that served as Doctor Overtree's hospital. Inside the cottage, chests full of medical tools, a desk and a bookshelf took up most of the space. What space was left (save for a few chairs and a couple square feet of standing area) was taken up by three cots lying side by side. They got Dagos Qorgyle down on one of the cots and Doc turned to Boremund:  
"Field Marshal Gray, I do suggest you leave the premises, I do work better when I am alone, save for the patient of course"  
"Yes, of course"  
As he left the cottage, he snorted with laughter. He'd had the rank of Field Marshal bestowed upon by the Chairman, but his command was scarcely large enough to be run by a Lieutenant Colonel. Around five hundred men of the People's Revolutionary Army were under his command. They were stationed near the village of Drummer's Cross, by the Drummer's Rill, in which Wyman Overtree washed his tools. They had erected several cottages here, two miles outside the village, one where Overtree could work, one where he could sleep and ten others that served as quarters for the wounded and sick. The men slept on the ground. Dawn was breaking in the east, and a black dot appeared on the horizon. After a few minutes he could make out some of it, it looked like a rider. After twenty more minutes, the rider, dressed in crude, colorless roughspun reined up in front of Boremund atop a lathered horse. At his side a Lysene .45 Pistol was holstered.  
"Field Marshal Boremund Gray?" the young man asked, wiping his sweaty forehead.  
"Yes" Boremund replied. The youngster saluted.  
"Fifth Comrade Eldon Free, People's Messenger Corps"  
"At ease, what you got?" he asked.  
"Field Marshals Waylong, Usher, Wake and Worner are joining their respective forces for a push on the town of Stormlord's Hill; you are commanded by the People's High Command to join them within six weeks"  
"What of Drummer's Cross?"  
"I was not told what would happen to the village you are currently defending"  
Boremund nodded and said:  
"Why don't you get yourself some chow at the cookfire and a fresh horse, so you can get back to… from where did you set out?"  
"People's Dream, eleven miles east of here"  
Boremund nodded again and led Eldon Free to the cookfire. The messenger accepted a bowl of chicken stew and a heel of bread, as did Boremund. As he ate, he contemplated what to do about Drummer's Cross. The village was larger than most in the area, with 850 or so residents, he could, he supposed, raise and train a militia, but where would he get the weapons? Then it hit him. He turned to Gowen Edricssen.  
"Did you and your boys collect the carbines the Dornish cavalrymen were using? Did you collect the ammunition as well?"  
"Aye and aye" replied the machine gunner.  
"How many?" Boremund asked.  
"Three and sixty, I think, and quite a bit of ammo to boot"  
Three and sixty was not enough to equip a militia able to defend Drummer's Cross, but it was a start.  
"Isn't there a Stormlandish arsenal couple of miles north of here?"  
"Aye, it's at Brigade Hill, I think, twenty-two miles in fact"  
"I do think, I'm in a mind for a raid"

**First Comrade Gowen Edricssen was **handing out orders to his three machine gun crews.  
"Alright, we got two platoons defendin' this here arsenal, only got one machine gun crew though, so we got 'em outnumbered on that front. We got a hunnerd rifleman with us too, so they'll be helpin' us"  
They were almost at the top of Brigade Hill. On the other side of the hill the arsenal was located. The rifleman would arrive soon; they had set out a day or so later than the six machine gunners.  
"Once they arrive, we'll move up to the top of this here hill, and we'll be opening up on the oppressors. The riflemen will be charging down the hill while we cover 'em. We'll have to disable their machine gun crew quick as we can, or they're gonna be mowin' down our boys"  
The machine gunners nodded. Down below the hill, the mass of rifleman were coming close to its foot. When they were well on their way to where Edricssen and his crews were, Gowen led said crews to the top of Brigade Hill. He told them to set up, but not to open fire, the Stormlanders would be unlikely to discover them if they didn't fire at them. When the riflemen were very near the top of the hill, he gave the order to open fire.  
The machine guns started clattering away, mowing down men in golden uniforms. Two men moved towards the lone machine gun they had. To Gowen's delighted astonishment, the two men were killed before they reached the machine gun. The rest of the platoons opened fire on the machine gun crews. Most of the bullets bit into the side of the hill, others cracked past the standing Edricssen's head. The rifleman of the Army of the Socialist Republic of the Marches were now joining the fray, stopping to fire a volley down on the enemy from the top of the hill, before charging down the slope. Several foes were killed. This was the smoothest and fastest raid Gowen had ever experienced. After just ten or fifteen minutes, he heard a shout coming from the arsenal:  
"We got 'em! Oh yeah, we got 'em!" Gowen made his way down the hill and asked:  
"How many we lose?"

"None, well Hugh got shot in the arm but he ain't dead" replied Third Comrade Bonifer Browne.  
They broke open the doors to the arsenal and found it packed to bursting point with weaponry.  
"I'm gonna go get the pack horses, we can't carry all this" said Browne. He was right, though Gowen didn't intend to bring it all. They could take the half dozen machine guns and the ammunition required to operate them, they could take most of the VYR 12 rifles stored upon the weapon racks on the wall as well as the ammunition to use them. They could not take any of the 6-pounder field guns or their shells, there were too many of them, they didn't have enough horses to spare to drag them and none of the men under command of Field Marshal Boremund Gray were trained artillerymen. He wouldn't let the Stormlandish oppressors use them either. He decided that once he had taken the weapons he could, he would use some of the dynamite in the arsenal to blow the guns up. He wasn't too happy about that either, artillery was very useful. He remembered then that Field Marshal Donnel Usher had been an artillery lieutenant and had taken two or three 9-pounders when he left the aristocratic army of the Stormlands. He would surely have those and more besides when they attacked Stormlord's Hill. The weapons they took here would be used to arm the militia Boremund wanted to raise out of the residents of Drummer's Cross, so the village would not be undefended when they left it. When Bonifer Browne and his men returned with the dozen pack horses they'd brought, they loaded them up with weapons and started the long, day and a half march back to Drummer's Cross.


	4. The Shells Fall

9 miles west of Greyborough, the Reach, United Kingdoms of Westeros, 987 AC

Major Tybolt Yarwyck watched gleefully from the trenches that had belonged to the Reachmen as the Army of the Greyflow retreated. They were retreating southward, in great droves. He pumped his fist in the air and shouted:  
"Victory! Victory! Victory!" the mass of soldiers behind him picked up the chant.  
"Victory! Victory! Victory! Victory!"  
After a month of fighting, they had finally beaten the Reachmen. Soon the lion of Lannister would be flying over Greyborough and its neighbors, Goldentown and Greyburn. Exaltation filled Tybolt as he chanted. They had won. They had won.

**Sergeant Mors Ladybright pulled the **lanyard of the 6-pounder. The gun roared and spat flame. The loader, Corporal Olyvar Wells, put a new shell into the breech. Mors yanked the lanyard again. The shell screamed down upon Redman's Hollow. Stationed on the hill outside it as it was, Battery C of the 1st Red Mountains Artillery had a commanding view of the town taken over by the reds. The Reachmen outside that shithole town Blueburn Pines might be reluctant to fire upon it, but no such qualms inhibited Mors Ladybright. Most inhabitants of Redman's Hollow were Stormlanders, and Ladybright had no use for the Baratheons and their ilk. The other guns in the battery roared as well. The whistle blew to signal the scheduled end of the barrage. Mors sent off an extra shell just for the hell of it. He wiped sweat from his forehead and inspected his work. They had all but obliterated the western part of town, wrecked a block or two in northern and pricked the southern, that was one fine barrage. Suddenly whistles blew as the three companies from the 2nd Red Mountains Foot charged the town. Mors was glad he wasn't in the infantry. He wanted to start shelling the town again, but if he did, his superiors would reprimand him into oblivion. Instead he stood up and let the breeze cool him, even if he was shirtless. Running a battery was a hot business. As he sat on a rock, munching on a peanut butter sandwich, he heard rifle fire open up. He did his best to ignore them and instead made approving noises about the sandwich. Dornish soldiers ate better than most, and the Dornish Mountain Division ate better than the others in the Dornish Armed Forces. In fact it was so luxurious, that even in the field, they could order from a collection of sandwiches, to be cooked in the huge complex of tents that served as the kitchens. Olyvar Wells, munching on a chicken salad sandwich, said:  
"I sure do enjoy this sandwich, but I'm bored all the same. Wish we could've shelled them for more than two hours"  
"Yeah me too, but I sure as hell am impressed with the fact that we managed to do that to that shithole of a town in two hours"  
"Yeah, we fucked it up didn't we?"  
"Sure did"  
"How long do you reckon it'll take for the infantry to capture this place?" Wells asked.  
"Not too long, a day or two"  
Olyvar nodded and kept on eating his sandwich.  
"I heard that the reds raided an arsenal up north" the corporal said.  
"Yeah, at Brigade Hill I think, wasn't one of ours though"  
"Still, they got more weapons to use against us"  
"And on the Stormlanders" Mors reminded him. Wells was quiet then, he was less ferocious in his hatred of the Stormlands.  
Mors stood up and walked down the hill toward the kitchen complex. He was still hungry after the peanut butter sandwich; he hadn't eaten since lunch the day before. He went into the complex and got himself a bowl of snake stew, filled with peppers and a bit of venom to give it a good bite. He ate alone, staring out over the plains and listened to the rifle fire in Redman's Hollow. Suddenly, the wounded started flooding in on stretchers. The men who carried them put them down in front of the field hospital, upon which moment paramedics and nurses started seeing to them. Mors looked on unhappily, he hadn't attended Military Medical Education (MME) despite his parents' urging-his older brother was in the Medicinal Corps and they wanted him to follow in Harmen's footsteps-he hadn't regretted it, until now. Once he'd finished his stew, he went back up the hill to the rest of Battery C. Captain Manfrey Jordayne who-at least nominally-commanded the battery, had joined the others on the hill.  
"Sergeant Ladybright, welcome back, now that you have filled your belly, I may tell you the good news"  
"Good news, sir?" Mors asked.  
"We are being transferred from this force, Battery F will be taking our place here and we may move on northward from this shithole of a town"  
"How is it good news? I mean, I hate this town as much as the next guy, but I don't see how the next will be any different"  
"That is the best part, Sergeant, we aren't moving to a town, we're moving to Nettlewood!"  
"Nettlewood?" Mors asked, surprised at the name of the second largest city in the Marches.  
"Isn't it bully, Sergeant?! We'll be out of the country and in a true and proper city!"  
"I suppose"  
A larger population, meant more Stormlanders.

**The waves broke against the **hull of the _Sunspear_ as she made her way up the Narrow Sea. Petty officer Arthur Vaith put his hand on the barrel of the 2-pound gun he operated. The destroyer carried five of those guns, as well as two 4-inchers and four 21-inch torpedo tubes. Behind the _Sunspear_, her sisters, the _Raven _and the _Queen Nymeria_ steamed forth. They would join the cruisers, the _Catfish_, the _Planky Town_ and the _Prince Mors_, docked at Claw Isle, making use of the Celtigars' neutrality. After they had joined the cruisers they would steam down the Bay of Crabs to bombard Maidenpool. Arthur patted the gun and looked down into the sea, as the rain beat down upon him. They soon rounded Massey's Hook, the lighthouse near Sharp Point making its presence known to the ships out in Blackwater Bay and the Narrow Sea beyond. Sailing through Blackwater Bay wasn't the most efficient way to Claw Isle, but Arryn submarines prowled the area in large numbers. Six Dornish ships had been torpedoed in the last month, one of them, the gunboat _Ladybright_, had been the ship Arthur's second cousin Garibald served on. Arthur hadn't shed a tear, he barely knew Garibald Vaith. They'd meet every year to celebrate the Day of the Father and the Day of the Mother, they'd greet each other politely at weddings and the rare times Arthur went to the Sept, but that was about it. Night was coming on swiftly, it was already quite dark, the clouds covering the sky like a dark, ominous blanket. After an hour, when the rain had ceased and it was so dark Arthur could barely see, a light appeared on the horizon.  
"That would be Driftmark" said fellow Petty officer Myles Gargalen.  
"Yes, I expect we'll be docking at High Tide tonight or maybe Hull" Arthur replied.  
"I've been to both High Tide and Hull," said Seaman Dickon Sand "High Tide's pleasant enough, but Hull… now Hull I'd rather avoid, place stinks worse than Fort Ghaston Grey"

**Commander Garibald Vaith huddled underneath **a rough blanket. He was somewhere on Massey's Hook, he wasn't sure exactly where, with three Seamen and a Warrant officer, survivors of the sinking. After the torpedo had hit the _Ladybright_, they'd managed to jump overboard and swim ashore. They'd been just off Sharp Point, and swum up to Bar Emmon's Beach. In their red sailor's uniforms, they'd been quite conspicuous and made their way to the small town of Beachside Nest, where they'd bought new clothes and sold the old ones, only taking their service badges-as they'd have to show them to the military authorities once they got back to Dorne-because Garibald feared Triumvirate spies.  
"Goddamn Arryn bastards, where the fuck were our thrice-damned submarines, huh?" said Warrant officer Edgar Uller.  
"Damned if I know" said Seaman Ricasso Thimyon.  
Garibald kept quiet, holding his hands over the fire to warm them. The blanket was rough, but it was warm enough to sleep in, he'd taken it as it dried on a string outside a farm.  
After another ten or fifteen minutes of angry conversation between his men he said:  
"Time to hit the hay, men, we leave for Thrallwood at dawn"  
"What the fuck we supposed to do at Thrallwood?" asked Seaman Gulian Stryfe.  
"What the fuck are we supposed to do at Thrallwood,_ sir_," Garibald corrected, "We are going to buy horses, Seaman Stryfe, we can't walk all the way to Dorne, and the trains stopped going once the war began"  
"Do you think we have enough money for five horses, sir? I mean we sold the uniforms, but we only made…" Ricasso stopped to count the money he had in his trouser pocket-he'd been a clerk before joining the navy to avoid conscription into the army, so they trusted him with the money-and picked up again: "Seventy-five Stags and thirty Stars, since we bought these rags"  
"I know a horse-breeder by the name of Rugen Admerry, he lives perhaps two miles outside Thrallwood, he'll cut me a good deal, if we can't get five horses, we can definitely get three, and we'll have two men on two of the horses" said Garibald.  
"Even if you know this Admerry, sir, that will surely take most of our money, if not all, how are we supposed to get food?" Ricasso persisted.  
"We'll forage" Garibald said curtly and lay down to sleep.  
He woke as dawn was breaking on the horizon, and kicked the men awake.  
"Come on men, just twelve miles to Thrallwood"  
It was still pretty cold in the air, and the colorless roughspun they wore didn't do much to keep it out. As they marched on, they got warmer but not much. They made it into town at around eight o'clock, Garibald judged, as the shops were opening and Thrallwood was coming to life. He let his men take a break and sit down on a street bench. He himself went to look for someone to ask for directions to Rugen Admerry's ranch, he didn't remember the way in great detail. After he'd walked for around ten minutes, he saw something that delighted him. On the other side of the street, there was a large, whitewashed building with a large sign above the door that proclaimed:  
"**DORNISH CENTRAL BANK**"  
That was Garibald's bank. Despite its name, the bank had several offices in each of the regions of Westeros, but Garibald hadn't known they had one in Thrallwood. He ran over and went into the bank. The office wasn't as large as the ones in Vaithville and Sunspear, but it was large enough. It was empty of customers at the moment, so Garibald had a straight walk up to the service window. A pale man in a black sack suit was the clerk who had the window today.  
"Welcome to Dornish Central Bank, how may I help you?" he asked in a bored voice.  
"I'd like to make a withdrawal"  
The clerk looked up and studied him, his eyes said:  
"You're too poor to have an account here" but his mouth did not say that.  
"Name and account number?"  
"Garibald Vaith, Dornish Navy, 221 876"  
When Garibald said his name, the man brightened suddenly.  
"Password, Mr. Vaith?" the clerk asked, now polite as you please.  
"111 327 928" Garibald replied.  
After the Clerk had crosschecked the information with his files, he said with a smile:  
"Greetings, Mr. Vaith, how much would you like to withdraw today?"  
"_Commander _Vaith, if you please. Fifty Dragons, a thousand stags"  
"That is quite a bit of money, Commander Vaith, are you sure that is how much you want to withdraw?" asked the clerk.  
"I am" Garibald replied stoically.  
"Well then, I should go tend to it then"  
The clerk went off and was gone for a while before he returned. He handed Garibald the money. Vaith put the money in his pocket and exited the bank. He returned to his men.  
"I have procured fifty Dragons and a thousand Stags from my bank, which has an office in town. We will use the money to equip ourselves for the long trek to Dorne, with food, supplies, firearms and ammunition, new clothes and horses. Any questions?"  
The men shook their heads. They began with the clothes.  
After twenty minutes in the clothing shop, Garibald chose a warm cotton shirt, a brown leather vest, a pair of warm cowhide trousers, a pair of leather boots and a brown, cotton Ascot cap. All the others chose similar attire, though there were differences. He paid the shopkeeper-it cost about twelve stags-and left the shop. Next, they bought large leather backpacks, a couple of saddlebags and a wallet. After that, they left for the general store, to buy supplies. They bought cans of corned beef, hardtack, a couple of bags of low quality coffee, and a pot to brew it in. Next remained only one thing: weapons. They searched for a while after a shop that sold firearms, before finding a building that said:  
"**Morroe's Arms and Ammunition**"  
The five men went inside. They found the place packed with weapons-they weren't up to military standards, of course but they would do-and they started to browse. A man with a bushy, red beard stood behind a counter, watching them. Garibald picked up a lever-action, breech-loader. It looked dated, and sure enough, in a small golden text on the side of the rifle it said:  
_Swyft Repeating Rifle Model 962_

Garibald settled for the twenty-five year old rifle, figuring it would work enough. He also picked up a large, clip-pointed knife, with a broad blade. He could use it for other things except fighting. He waited for the others to choose their weapons and walked up to the counter. He put down the rifle and the knife in front of the man behind it.  
"How much ammo, do you want for that?"  
Garibald didn't think he would have to use the rifle for something other than hunting-at least not until they got to the Marches-but just to be safe he said:  
"Six boxes"  
The man bent down and retrieved the boxes of .44 caliber ammunition and put them down on the counter.  
"That'll be ten Stags"  
Garibald paid the man and gave the others money to do the same with their weapons and ammo. When they left the shop, they looked almost like bandits, dressed in mismatched clothes, armed with dated weapons. Then they began the short, forty or so minute walk to Rugen Admerry's ranch. When they reached the ranch, the sun was high in the sky, and the neighing of horses could be heard. They entered the ranch to find a large room. In an armchair, a beautiful young woman sat knitting.  
He coughed. The woman looked up, exposing her big blue eyes that went perfectly with her long blonde hair.  
"How can I help you, gentlemen?" she asked in a soft voice.  
"I am Commander Garibald Vaith, Dornish Navy, I know Rugen Admerry, the owner of this ranch"  
"Oh, you know my father?" the woman asked, standing up.  
"Yes, ma'am, may we speak to him?"  
"Of course, Commander, let me just go get him"  
She returned with Rugen Admerry in toe. The old horse-breeder had a sizeable girth, a bushy, white mustache and the friendliest face you'd ever see.  
When Rugen saw Garibald, he brightened instantly.  
"Garibald, ya old bastard, what you doin' here?" he studied the navy men, "and dressed like that?"  
"My ship, the _Ladybright_ was sunk by an Arryn submarine off Sharp Point, we managed to swim ashore at Bar Emmon's Beach. We bought all this in Thrallwood; we have to get back to Dorne"  
"You'll want horses, then, saddles and bridles as well you got saddlebags, I can see that"  
"Yes, Mr. Admerry, we'd like five horses and I have enough money to pay you"  
"I'll get 'em ready, Shiera will get you some coffee while you wait"  
Rugen's daughter scurried off as Rugen went outside. Shiera returned with some cups and a pot of coffee. She poured them each a cup and they drank in silence. After twenty of thirty minutes they went outside, to find five horses waiting for them. Saddled and ready. Rugen stood beside them.  
"How much will it be, Rugen?" Garibald asked.  
"Give me a hundred Stags, Gari, these are tough times we live in"  
"I understand" Garibald said as he gave the horse-breeder the money. Vaith mounted a piebald mare, his men mounted other the other horses.  
"Farewell, Gari, ride safe!"  
"I'll come back when the war is over, Rugen, you'll see!" Garibald shouted back as he trotted away.  
"If you live that long!"


	5. The Blood Flows, The Bomb Drops

Nettlewood, United Kingdoms of Westeros (or the Socialist Republic of the Marches), 987 AC

Mors Ladybright drank deep of the Braavosi rotgut. The saloon was gloomily lit, and almost empty, but it sported a free lunch spread and a brothel upstairs, which was good enough for Mors, though he preferred Dornish girls to the pale Stormlandish lasses. He walked over to the free lunch spread and made himself a ham and cheese sandwich. He ate slowly, and washed it down with another glass of rotgut. When he was done he walked up the stairs to the brothel. He'd fucked only three of the twenty or so women that worked upstairs, and he didn't plan on fucking more. He waited for his favorite whore, a tiny blonde named Jeyne to finish with her customer, then went in to a room with her:  
"Pleasure me with your mouth" he growled. She knelt to do the task. After a few minutes he writhed, groaned and spurted into Jeyne's mouth. The whore stood up and spit out his juices. Mors threw a few Stags down on the bed and stared at the likeness of King Aerys V, which was stenciled on the banknote.  
"You should go, I have more customers" Jeyne said in a soft voice.  
"I'm going" Mors said harshly, and left. He walked down into the saloon and exited through the front door. Outside, a streetwalker was doing to a trooper out of the 4th Red Mountains Foot what Jeyne had done to Mors. The man looked to be enjoying it. Mors walked past the two, and passed another trooper who'd passed out with an empty bottle of Lysene rum clutched in his right hand. Being on leave-they weren't officially on leave but Nettlewood was so safe they might as well have been-was more boring than he would have expected, he'd discovered he'd liked the combat, and wished he'd seen more of it. He was brought back into the real world when he saw… her. She was wearing a light, white dress that looked nice with her flowing brown locks; she had big brown eyes and a perfectly shaped nose. Her skin was as pale as skin came. She sat on a bench with her legs crossed. He walked over to her.

**The room was as gloomy **as the saloons in the city. Trystane Manwoody groaned and rolled over, wiping sweat from his forehead. Cassana sat up, and said:  
"Hand me that glass of water, will you?"  
"Sure thing, love" Trystane said and picked up the glass from the bedside table. He handed it to her. She drank deep. She straightened, and the cover fell down, revealing her soft, pillowing breasts. Her brown locks brushed against her breasts as she reached over to set the glass down again.  
"What did you do today?" she asked him.  
"The normal, woke up, had breakfast, had a drink at the _Drunken Dollop_, had lunch, had another few drinks, came here, fucked you and now I'm telling you what I did today"  
She laughed softly.  
"Why? What did you do today?" he asked.  
"Wouldn't you like to know" she said in a teasing voice.  
"Oh I do" he replied.  
"Well if you must know, I met someone today" she said.  
"A male someone?" he asked, feeling the jealousy boiling up within him.  
"Yes" she replied.  
"Who?"  
"Sergeant Mors Ladybright"  
Trystane's eyes widened, and he sat up. He put on his socks and started putting on his trousers.  
"Where are you going?" Cassana asked him.  
"To the barracks" he replied.  
_Mors fucking Ladybright _he thought as he drew on his sleeveless shirt. He left Cassana there, naked in the bed and exited her home. He walked toward the barracks. Trystane was fuming. He knew what he do next. He clenched his fists and walked faster. He was quite close to the barracks of the 1st Red Mountains Artillery when the alarm went off. He could hear buzzing overhead.  
"The reds don't have aeroplanes!" was all he had time to shout before the building to his side exploded.

**Field Marshal Boremund Gray inspected** his men, all five hundred and twenty-seven of them. They wore mismatched clothes, the only semblance of uniformity being the red bandanas they wore around their foreheads and left upper arms. Most of them were armed with VYR 12s, some had LR 4s and fewer still had Oldtown 15s. Six of them were machine gunners, and had only pistols when they weren't operating them. The other Field Marshals were doing the same with their men. His own were hardened veterans in good shape. Most of them-deserters from the Army of the Stormlands-had fought the Braavosi twelve years earlier and those who hadn't had had enough battle hardening in the Marches. They could form a line; they could dig trenches and foxholes and set up barricades. They were good soldiers; they'd have to be to give the Dornishmen and the Stormlanders the licking they had. At the last count for which Boremund had been present, the People's Revolutionary Army numbered a total of 10,500 men, but that had been a year ago, and more proletarians joined the fight every day, he was sure it numbered several thousands more now. He himself had recently gotten word that his own force-the Tiger Guards-would be expanded upon, with another three hundred riflemen, equipped and trained by the Socialist Republic's secret allies, the Tyroshi. The attack on Stormlord's Hill would commence in thirteen hours, the town was defended by a regiment with which Boremund was quite familiar, the 11th Nightsong Infantry.  
Field Marshal Usher had been shelling the town on and off for two days with the artillery he had. It was a ragtag battery of eleven guns, seven 9-pounders, two 6-pounders, a fast-firing 3-inch howitzer and a 12-pounder. The last two had been provided by the Tyroshi. Stormlord's Hill was ripe for an infantry charge and the other Field Marshals and Boremund himself were excited to give it one. Usher didn't just command the field guns, his force, the Red Raiders, was almost five hundred strong. At a total, the revolutionary force outside Stormlord's Hill numbered 2,845 men.  
"_**TIGER GUARDS!**_" Boremund exclaimed. His men stiffened suddenly.  
"_**DISMISSED! REASSMBLE AT THIS SPOT IN EXACTLY TWELVE HOURS, UNDERSTOOD!?**_"  
"Sir, yes, sir!" the cry came back. The ranks dissolved into a big blob. Boremund made his way to a cookfire, around which sat First Comrade Gowen Edricssen and his machine gunners.  
"What you got there?" Boremund asked.  
"Coffee" Edricssen said and handed him a tin cup. Gray drank deep of the black liquid and sat down.  
"You boys ready?" he asked the machine gunners.  
"Always ready to fight for the proletariat" said one of them. The others nodded agreement.  
"That's my man. I bet we'll outperform the others by a long shot" said Boremund. The others nodded again. His own Tiger Guards would approach Stormlord's Hill from the east; Usher's Red Raiders would advance from the west. Field Marshal Waylong's Terror Tribe and Worner's Flame Followers would charge _en masse _from the southwest whilst Field Marshal Wake and his Blood Battalion would move from the south.  
"Get a few hours of sleep boys, long day tomorrow" Boremund said.

**Chairman Owen Norcross looked down **on the document and smiled.  
"Four thousand men?" he asked, unable to believe it.  
"Four thousand men from the Reach?"  
"Yes, Mr. Chairman" said Secretary of the Army, Jammos Drayke.  
Owen was from the Reach himself, but he'd only been able to take a few scores worth of men with him when he left for the Marches. Most of the 23,000-or well 27,000 now-fighting men in the People's Revolutionary Army were from the Stormlands or the Dornish Marches.  
"Are we able to arm them all?" Owen asked.  
"Yes, with VYR 12s and a couple of Oldtown 15s but that will clean us out, we'll have to get more from the Tyroshi"  
"I'm sure our allies will help the revolution," Owen replied. He'd been a member of the aristocracy in the Reach, until he'd read the writings of the Tyroshi political philosopher Emmendo Tayotis-especially the books _The Dream of the People_ and _Understanding Dialectics_-and left for the Marches. Once he'd gotten to the Marches and set up his headquarters in the western hills, he'd reached out to the government of the Tyrosh Socialist Republic, which had happily provided them with weapons and supplies, welcoming the prospect of a proletarian ally in a world of aristocracies and bourgeois republics.  
"As am I, Mr. Chairman. Onward to other matters, then," Drayke said and sat himself down on the chair in front of Owen's desk. He removed a map of the Marches, Northern Dorne and the Southern Stormlands from a bag and placed it on the desk.  
"Mr. Chairman, I believe our best option, once Stormlord's Hill has fallen is to rally nearly half our strength at Forewood Pyre and loop around Nettlewood using the Hill Roads to attack Tallwood Kindling, King's Hallow, Stormsand Creek, Redman's Hollow and Redwall each in good order. Once we've taken these towns, we'll have cut off Nettlewood from support from the rear, which means they'll be short on supplies after a short while. That leaves the Dornishmen at Nettlewood three options, try and take back the towns, leaving Nettlewood undefended, charge northward to try and take some of the territory we've taken from the Stormlands, once again leaving Nettlewood undefended, or sit and wait to be starved out. I suggest that if the Dornishmen choose to stay, that we put Nettlewood under our guns by utilizing the hills around it"  
"It's a good plan, Comrade Drayke, send the messengers"  
Drayke nodded, stood up and went off toward the headquarters of the People's Messenger Corps. 

**Fifth Comrade Lyonel Blackjay fired **his VYR 12. The lackey of the aristocracy he'd aimed for went down. He worked to bolt to bring another round into the breech and fired again. They'd been fighting in Stormlord's Hill for almost two days, and the People's Revolutionary Army were getting the upper hand. The Tiger Guards had broken into the eastern part of town and forced the 11th Nightsong back several hundred yards, whilst the Red Raiders came at them from the west. The Stormlanders had been caught between the two forces and when the Blood Battalion came from the south they'd tried to retreat northward. That had put them under Field Marshal Usher's guns and they'd had to charge back into town, only to be faced with the Terror Tribe and the Flame Followers. Half of the Tiger Guards had then moved to close of the northern escape route, which meant that the 11th Nightsong was trapped in the middle of town, being pelted into submission from all sides. Lyonel fired again and ducked back behind the wall of the saloon. He took a new 5-round clip from his belt and stored it in the magazine. He squeezed off a trio of rounds at the enemy, he was sure he got at least one. He emptied the clip and replaced it. He looked down at his belt; he had twenty more clips, which was enough for now. Lyonel corrected the red bandana around his forehead before leaning forth and fired his rifle. He took his canteen from his belt and drank deep of the water. He braced himself and ran for it. He got about twelve feet before he had to dive down into a foxhole some Stormlander had dug before they'd been pushed back. He had a better view now, and aimed and fired at a Stormlander who was shooting down at the ever advancing revolutionaries from the second-floor window of a bank. The man took a round in the chest and dropped his VYR 12. Lyonel squeezed off another four rounds in quick succession, one of which took down a rifleman who'd stuck his head up from behind a crate. He replaced the clip once more and emptied it again. A small group of revolutionary soldiers broke into a barricaded saloon. Lyonel emptied another clip before rushing forth again this time to break into a coffee shop. On the second floor, a squad of oppressors was firing at the revolutionaries with a machine gun. He shot two of them, knocked out another with the butt of his rifle and stabbed another with his knife. He pushed the machine gun out the window. He made sure the building was empty before exiting it and moving on to clear out an alley. He returned to the square where the main fighting was. He dove back into the foxhole and fired frantically at the lackeys of the aristocracy. After several more hours, the enemy fire suddenly died down and it did not take long until the revolutionaries seized fire as well. Several white strips of cloth were being waved all over the square. Lyonel knew what that meant, the Stormlanders were surrendering. 

"**How many did we lose**?" Boremund asked Third Comrade Bonifer Browne.  
"Just us or the entire army?" the former clerk asked.  
"Both" Boremund replied.  
"The Tiger Guards lost twenty-one men. Our entire force suffered 179 casualties, 102 dead 77 wounded"  
"That's not so bad" Boremund said.  
Browne nodded and walked off. Boremund was on his way to a cookfire to get some grub, a revolutionary out of the Tiger Guards rushed over to him.  
"Field Marshal Gray! There's a messenger in town, says he won't talk to nobody but you and them other Field Marshals!"  
Boremund stopped in his tracks, did an about-face and marched back toward Stormlord's Hill.  
The four other Field Marshals stood in a semicircle around a man wearing the scarlet bandana of the PMC. Once he arrived the man turned to him and saluted:  
"Fifth Comrade Harwood Tiller, People's Messenger Corps"

"Now that you're here, Gray I'm sure the Comrade can get to it" said Lomas Wake.  
The messenger nodded and said:  
"The People's High Command and the Secretary of the Army have instructed Field Marshals: Boremund Gray, Lomas Wake, Clifford Waylong and Donnel Usher to take their respective forces, the Tiger Guards, the Blood Battalion, the Terror Tribe and the Red Raiders to Forewood Pyre, and await further orders. Field Marshal Worner and his Flame Followers will be staying here to guard the area around Stormlord's Hill,"  
"_No-Lord's Hill_" corrected Clifford Waylong.  
The messenger paid him no heed.  
"You are commanded to be at Forewood Pyre within two weeks. If any of your forces are waiting to be expanded upon, that will happen at Forewood Pyre"

**Tommondo Ebardiye lifted the crate **full of .303-inch caliber ammunition onto the deck of the _Tarantula_, where it was taken care of by Denneno Farisa. That was the last of the ammunition that would be travelling with the _Tarantula_. Tommondo turned and picked up another crate, this one stuffed with 6-pound shells. He hoisted this one up, as with the last one. Ebardiye lifted up four more crates of 6-pounders and then he was done with that. Next came the 3-inch shells that went with the fast-firing howitzers. They had seven crates of those. After that came ten crates of bayonets and two crates of Lysene .45 pistols.  
Denneno peered down from the deck of the _Tarantula _and stroked his yellow beard.  
"The cargo hold is full, Tommondo, can't take any more crates. Cap'n says we'll be off soon, you better bring the rest over to the others"  
Tommondo nodded and lifted the last two crates back onto the back of the truck before driving off. He stopped at the warehouse and let the workers there stock him up again. He drove back to the harbor in time to watch the _Tarantula _steam off. He continued on to the next blockade runner, the _Rattlesnake_. He got out of the truck and started to do the same there. He began with the fourteen boxes of VYR 12s, hoisting them up onto the deck of the _Rattlesnake _and letting the crew bring them to the cargo hold. After that he did the same with another twenty crates of .303-inch caliber ammunition. Another few boxes of 3-inch shells and Lysene .45s, as well as a few crates of canned goods, such as corned beef and conserved pineapples and his truck was empty. Tommondo saw a few cranes hoist a trio of 3-inch howitzers onto the deck of another blockade runner, the _Grey Devil_ just as a man just like him was loading it up with crates just like he'd done with the _Tarantula _and the _Rattlesnake_. He couldn't believe how much money they were sinking into the revolution in the Marches of Westeros. Fifteen blockade runners were steaming for the rocky beaches that made up the coastline of the Dornish Marches as well as seven merchant submarines. That must have cost millions. Tommondo shook his head, it was not his place to question the Chairman and the People's Council, if they saw the sense into sinking millions and millions of Honors into the setting up of a sole proletarian ally half a world away he supposed he could too.

**First Comrade Endrew Edgewood of **the People's Supply Ministry oversawthe unloading of the three Tyroshi blockade runners that had anchored off Stingray Beach, the _Tarantula_, the _Rattlesnake _and the _Black Beaver_. He held a notebook in his left hand and a pencil in his right. Once all the cargo was unloaded he went over to count them.  
As he did he scratched he numbers into the notebook.  
The final tally ended up as:  
_60 crates of .303-inch caliber ammunition  
40 crates of .45 caliber ammunition  
10 crates of Lysene .45 pistols, each containing 30 pieces  
37 crates of VYR 12 rifles, each containing 5 pieces  
5 crates of 6-pound artillery shells  
7 crates of 3-inch howitzer shells  
10 crates of bayonets, each containing 50 pieces  
19 crates of canned corned beef  
12 crates of canned pineapple  
7 crates of coffee  
_It was a great deal of cargo and these were just three blockade runners. They'd been promised fifteen blockade runners and seven merchant submarines to unload their cargoes on the several rocky beaches of the Marches. Edgewood made sure his men got the cargo loaded up on the wagons and mounted his horse. The armed escort of 200 mounted riflemen was already ready to go.  
It took them nearly twelve hours to reach Martynswood, by that time the sun was high in the sky and Endrew tired.  
He went into the main office of the People's Supply Ministry-which had formerly been a bank-and gave the Minister of Supply the notebook. Renly Weste nodded and said:  
"With the five runners off Yeoman's Beach, we've racked up a lot of cargo. And we've got another seven runners and seven subs to boot"  
Endrew nodded and went home.

**When the sun rose above **Martynswood, Donal Morrenssen had already risen. As he shoveled dirt of the road that lead from the ranch to Martynswood, he wished he could do anything else. The neighing of the horses spread through the air. His father was a horse-breeder and had provided almost twenty horses to the revolution. Donal wanted to help the proletarian revolution, but he did not want to kill anyone. He was a gentle soul and had never even held a firearm. Once he was done with the dirt, he put the shovel back into the shed, took a drink of water and started the twenty minute walk to Martynswood. Once he got there he could see that the town was already buzzing with life. Wagon trains carrying supplies were coming in from the north, a couple of People's Militia men were walking their rounds clutching old single-shot breechloaders. Donal turned to go into Doricssen's General Store, before he saw something that intrigued him.  
A poster was nailed to the wall of the General Store, it showed a man in a dirt-brown uniform and scarlet bandanas around his forehead and left upper arm pointing forward. Above the man the poster proclaimed in big bold letters:  
**THE PMC WANTS YOU!  
**And below him in smaller text it said:  
_**Whilst the brave fighting men of the People's Revolutionary Army bleed for justice, the People's High Command need equally brave men to perform the perilous and utmost important task of delivering their orders to the Field Marshals in command of the field forces. This task falls to the People's Messenger Corps. Armed with a Lysene pistol and mounted atop his trusty steed, the People's Messenger travels alone, carrying the vital orders that assure the future of the revolution!  
**_In even smaller text below that it said:  
_**Enlist at your nearest PMC office!  
Pay: 5 Stags per week  
**_That looked interesting. There was a People's Messenger Corps office in Martynswood near the edge of town. Donal went into the store and bought some wire and some kerosene. We went back to the ranch and left the things in the shed. After a long day's work, Donal, his father Jack and his mother Roelle sat down to a dinner of roasted pork and mashed potatoes.  
"Pa" Donal said after he'd swallowed a mouthful of mashed potatoes.  
"Yeah?" asked Jack Morrenssen.  
"I saw this poster today; it was for the People's Messenger Corps. It said ya got five Stags a week just for delivering messages to the different Field Marshals"  
"Ya wanna join the PMC?"  
"I think so, it's decent pay and the work don't seem so hard"  
"Suppose I can't keep ya, though I do need help here on the ranch"  
"I'll be sure to send home the money so you can hire a ranch hand, pa"  
Jack nodded and said:  
"We'll go into town in the mornin', I gotta get some things from Jonessy's Leather, and ya can go to that PMC office at the edge of town" _**  
**_Donal nodded.  
The next morning, they went into town. Donal dropped off his father outside Jonessy's Leather and then whipped the horses that pulled the wagon into a trot. The PMC office had been an outpost of the Army of the Stormlands before the People's Revolutionary Army had chased the platoon occupying it out of town. Donal stepped off the wagon and went inside. The office was full of activity. A trio of messengers rushed past him and out the door, men were shouting or tying bandanas around their foreheads and left upper arms. Behind a finely carved rosewood table sat a graying man with a bushy beard. Above his head a large sign proclaimed: **  
ENLISTMENT  
**Donal went over to him. The man took up a notebook and a pencil.  
"Name?" he asked.

"Donal Morrenssen" Donal replied,  
"Age?"  
"Nineteen" answered Donal.  
"Occupation?"  
"I work on my pa's ranch"

"Oh yes, you're Jack's boy, he's provided many a horse to us here at the PMC"  
Donal nodded.  
"Alright then, tell me, Donal Morrenssen are you ready to serve the proletariat?"  
"Yes, I am" Donal replied.  
The man whistled and shouted:  
"Jaymes!"  
A young man came over.  
"Yes, boss?"  
"Take Donal here and give him his equipment and show him the ropes"  
Jaymes led Donal deeper into the office into a cramped storage area. There he opened a box and removed two scarlet bandanas.  
"Bind one of these around your forehead, the other around your upper left arm, that way people will know you're from the PMC"  
Donal nodded and put the bandanas in his pocket.  
"We don't have any uniforms except those bandanas, so you'll have provide your own clothes. Leather preferably or some other hardy material, you'll be riding long and hard and through rough terrain"  
Donal nodded again. Jaymes led him to another storage area. There he gave him a bag. It felt heavy.  
"That's your ammunition, you've got a hundred rounds in there so you're pretty much set" Donal nodded again. Jaymes took him into the yard, were several piles of crates were stacked near the walls.  
One of the crates was open. Jaymes went over to it, removed something from it and returned. He handed him a holstered pistol.  
"This is a Lysene .45, it's a very powerful pistol and it's not too hard to work with even for a newbie. It's got a six round cylinder, though I doubt you'll have to use it. It's just a precaution. You put it on your belt like so" Jaymes showed Donal his own holstered pistol.  
Donal nodded. Next Jaymes led him into a different building and into a large room full of maps.  
"The PMC has twenty-seven offices here in the Marches; each has its own jurisdiction. We're Office 13, and this is a map of our jurisdiction" Jaymes gestured. A large map on the wall showed five towns with Martynswood in the middle. They were all connected by a thin red line. Once the line had reached Worker's Wood on the right and Galladon Watch on the left,  
the red line spread northward and joined again to make a circle, which he saw symbolized an area of 150 square miles.  
"You have all that?" he asked.  
"We do, it's not that hard. We've got thirty messengers from before and since we put the posters up we've got another eleven counting you. Our sector doesn't get too many assignments though, but I hear we are going to get pretty busy in the next few weeks. Anyhow, each messenger gets a map of their jurisdiction"  
Jaymes gave Donal a map. Next he took him farther into the other building into another, larger storage area. There he gave him a large leather rucksack.  
"Here's where you'll have the map, a canteen of water and a can of corned beef or some other canned goods"  
Donal nodded again.  
"Do you have your own mount?" Jaymes asked.  
"My pa's a horse-breeder, so I think I can take on o' those"  
Jaymes nodded.  
"Then you're all set, report here at 06:00 tomorrow, dressed and ready for work"  
Donal nodded and exited the office.


	6. A Short Digression On The Past

**THIRTEEN YEARS EARLIER  
**Ahadro Noyan, Braavosi Andalos, Republic of Braavos, 974 AC

First Lieutenant Boremund Gray of Platoon D of Company A of the 11th Nightsong Infantry clambered up the hill outside the town of Ahadro Noyan, and threw himself flat when the shells started whistling in the sky. His men did the same behind him.  
"How you like your first taste of combat, Sergeant?" he asked Sergeant Renly Weste.  
"I don't like it for beans, sir" the noncom replied.  
"I didn't either but you get used to it" Gray said and stood up. He fired his Oldtown 13 into the town and worked the bolt to bring another round into the breech and fired again. All around him men were charging forth.  
Boremund started rushing forwards as well, his platoon followed him. They hit the ground again when more Braavosi shells started crashing down into the ground. A volley of Westerosi shells whistled through the sky in response. They kept down until the barrages had ended and then charged forward again. Gray jumped over a dead Braavosi and then into a shell-hole. He started firing into the town again and his platoon opened up as well. Boremund replaced his clip. He looked around and saw that the rest of the 11th Nightsong as well as several other regiments were forming up on Ahadro Hill. He pointed:  
"Come on men, we'll need to get up there!"  
He vaulted out of the shell-hole and, followed by his platoon, rushed up the hillside. Once they had gotten into formation, Colonel Rickard Caron walked over to him.  
"Took you long enough, Lieutenant!" he shouted over the sound of battle.  
"Did my best, sir!" Boremund replied.  
After the CO of the 11th Nightsong had walked away the commander of Company A appeared.  
Captain Lester Morrigen was a tall man with a long, grey beard.  
"Lieutenant Gray, we'll be having us one hell of a fusillade here soon! I need your men ready!" he shouted. Boremund nodded and made sure his and every other rifle in the platoon was loaded and ready.  
After a few minutes the Braavosi came flooding out of the town, charging the long front line the Northmen had formed five hundred yards outside of town. The command flooded down the line and the Stormlanders on Ahadro Hill opened up on the enemy just as the Northmen did the same with their Swyft Repeaters M969. The Braavosi died like flies and when the Valemen charged them from the left with rifle and bayonet, they broke and retreated back towards Ahadro Noyan. The Westerosi artillery picked up again, shelling the red temple of Ahadro Noyan into the dirt as well as several other buildings. Boremund didn't know how many men the Braavosi had in the portion of Andalos they controlled but most of them had to be in Ahadro Noyan. They had performed six of those charges, and seemed to be losing more men each time, but they still kept at it and had enough men to keep at it. When the all-clear was sounded, the battlefield quieted down and Boremund made his way back down. As he walked he tripped over the corpse of a Braavosi captain. He decided to see if the man had something worth looting. When he put his hands into the man's inner pocket he felt it close around something that felt like a book. He removed the book and looked at its cover. It was red and had the words:  
_The Dream of the People by Emmendo Tayotis _  
At the top in black letters. It was in the Common Tongue. Boremund had never heard of Emmendo Tayotis, but he thought it might be an interesting read, he hadn't brought any books from the Stormlands.  
"Everything alright, sir?" someone behind him said. Boremund turned and saw 19 year-old Corporal Rickard Lonmouth standing there.  
"Yeah, Corporal, just got myself something to entertain me, is all"


End file.
